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Sodium hydroxide is the lye you use to make bar soap. No other substances can be used in place of either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide to make soap. When you introduce lye to fats and oils, it breaks the molecules apart and bonds with them, creating a new compound – soap!.
Why is lye important in soap?
Without lye, the oils in your recipe would stay oils. Nothing would happen to them. A chemical change involving lye must happen in order to create soap.
What can I use instead of lye in soap making?
Here are some good choices: Goat’s Milk Soap Base. Shea Butter Soap Base. Glycerin Soap Base. Cocoa Butter Soap Base.
Do you need lye to make soap?
You cannot make soap from scratch without lye. If you’re making soap from scratch, you’ll require lye for the process of saponification. However, if you do not wish to handle the lye, you can make your soap using melt-and-pour soap bases.
What happens if you dont use lye in soap?
The short answer is that you simply can’t make soap without lye. If a product doesn’t begin with lye, it’s a detergent, not a soap or a shampoo. That doesn’t mean that some skin care products aren’t made without lye, but they don’t always do the same job or have the same benefits as soap.
Does Dove soap have lye in it?
Dove. It is true that the words “lye” or “sodium hydroxide” do not appear on the Dove ingredient label. But, the first ingredients listed were sodium tallowate, sodium cocoate, and sodium palm kernelate. Yes, Dove is made with lye!Feb 18, 2014.
Does Dawn have lye?
No. By the very definition, soap is not soap unless lye was used to make it (liquid or bar). Unfortunately surfactants are found in everything from laundry detergent, dishwashing soap, dishwasher detergent, hand soap, body wash, etc.
What is a natural substitute for lye?
The bulk oils I keep on hand for soap making (and general cooking and use) are: Coconut Oil. Olive Oil. Shea Butter. Cocoa Butter. Castor Oil. Avocado Oil. Mango Butter.
Where does lye come from naturally?
Whatever meat scraps and drippings you have on hand will supply the fat and the lye comes from wood ashes and water. To make lye in the kitchen, boil the ashes from a hardwood fire (soft woods are too resinous to mix with fat) in a little soft water, rain water is best, for about half an hour.
Can you use baking soda instead of lye to make soap?
It is certainly possible to make an acceptable cold process soap using baking soda or washing soda, but lather performance suffers compared to the same soap formula without them. This supports the conventional wisdom that they are better used in a hot process soap (after the cook) or in a rebatched soap.
Does Irish Spring soap have lye in it?
We’re gonna give it you, and we’re gonna give it to you straight: all soap contains lye. Yep, that’s right. Everything from Irish Spring to a good old Frankincense & Myrrh Zum Bar contains lye – if it didn’t, it would be considered a detergent, not SOAP! Soap is a product of this reaction, also called saponification.
Does glycerin soap have lye?
Glycerin soap is made without lye. Commercial soaps/detergents are safer than handmade soaps because they don’t have any lye in them.
How was soap made before lye?
Thousands of years ago before soap was available, people made their lye the old fashioned way by leaching water through wood ashes layered in a barrel or other container. If you’re in a far corner of the globe and can’t get lye locally, or are just curious how it’s made, you can make potassium hardwood lye yourself.
Is lye good for skin?
Lye is a caustic substance that can certainly damage your skin if you’re exposed to it. It can cause a number of problems, such as burns, blindness, and even death when consumed. The lye gets entirely used up during the process, which means it’s no longer present and can do no harm to your skin.
Does lye soap lighten skin?
All natural handmade Lye soap, use it as a full body soap or use it as a face and neck soap. Guaranteed to lighten and or remove blemishes and dark spots. Lye soap is great for dry and oily skin.
Is lye a natural ingredient?
Lye isn’t organic, but it is one of the allowable non-organic ingredients included in USDA organic standards since their inception. Lye, after all, is also known as caustic soda, and soap made from lye is what frontier women made in cauldrons that was great on clothes but murder on skin.
Does Ivory soap have lye in it?
Ivory is a lye based soap, and is the only lye based soap on the market today. Ivory is made by the reaction of Fat and oils (animal or plant) with either NaOH or KOH.
Is lye natural or synthetic?
Lye has been on the USDA approved list for organic products from day one, The FDA specifically exempts soap from it’s labeling requirements, and The Natural Ingredient Resource Center exempts soap and allows it to be listed as 100% natural if all the ingredients (which they require to be listed) are all natural.
What exactly is Castile Soap?
Castile soap is an amazingly versatile vegetable-based soap that’s made free of animal fats and synthetic ingredients. This natural, nontoxic, biodegradable soap is available in bar or liquid form. Traditionally, castile soap was made of olive oil. It gets its name from the Castile region of Spain.
